Looking after VIPs without running a second event
A guest of honour arriving to a queue is the kind of thing that gets remembered. You can give VIPs a smooth arrival without building a whole separate operation to do it.
By FrontHAUS Team · Editorial
Part of the Event data & follow-up guide →
Every guest of honour comes with a bit of dread. A minister, a CEO, the sponsor whose name is on the banner. Whatever goes wrong at an event, you'd rather it didn't go wrong in front of them, and the riskiest moment is the first one, when they walk through the door.
So the usual answer is a separate setup. A different desk, a printed list one staff member guards, a runner with a walkie-talkie, sometimes a whole parallel process that only one person on the team understands. It works, mostly, until that person is in the loo when the car pulls up.
It doesn't need to be its own machine. Handle your VIPs inside the same check-in everyone else goes through, just with a few things known ahead of time.
The arrival is the bit that matters
When a VIP arrives, the people meeting them should already know they're coming. Name flagged, host alerted, any detail that matters attached to it. Halal meal, mobility needs, a preference to be greeted by title, the photographer who's meant to be there for the handshake. None of that should be a scramble at the door. It should already be sitting there, so whoever greets them says the right name and walks them straight in.
Often the best VIP experience is the one that looks like nothing at all. No queue, no spelling out their name, no fumbling for a badge that was never printed. They're recognised, welcomed and moving before they've had a chance to wonder whether this event has its act together.
Because it all sits on the same guest list, you skip the classic mess of two lists that disagree. The VIP added at the last minute still shows up properly. The one who cancelled doesn't get announced to an empty doorway. And if a guest of honour walks in who somehow wasn't on anyone's radar, your team can welcome them as though they were expected, then sort the admin out later.
That last part is what your most important guests actually notice. Not the lanyard, not the welcome pack. The sense that they were expected, and that someone had thought about them before they got there.